The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett

Letter 24a

I hope you will give me great credit for obedience in having laboriously and against my
inclination endeavoured to compile a case for the plaintiff in re the alleged
contradictions. As I have said elsewhere these appear to me not much worth worrying about;
though for the present they leave me cloudy in my ideas about Devachan and the victims
of accident. It is because they do notfret methat I have never
hitherto acted on your suggestion thatI should make notes of them.
{Underline in blue pencil.}

(1)Hume has been inclined to trace contradictions in some letters referring to the evolution
of man, but in conversation with him I have always contended that these are not contradictions
at all, — merely due to a confusion about rounds and races — a matter of language.
Then he has pretended to think that you have built up the philosophy as you have gone
on, and got out of the difficulty by inventing a great many more races than were contemplated
at first, which hypothesis I have always ridiculed as absurd.

(2)I have not recopied here the passages about victims of accident quoted in my letter of
the 12th August and in apparent conflict with the corrections on the proof of my Letter
on Theosophy. You have already said apropos to these quotations, on back of mine
dated August 12th: —

(3)"I can easily understand we are accused of contradictions and inconsistencies aye even to
writing one thing to-day and denying it tomorrow. Could you but know how I write my letters
and the time I am enabled to give to them perchance you would feel less critical if not
exacting ——"

(4)This passage it was which led me to think it might be that some of the earlier letter
had been perhaps the "victim of accident" itself.

But to go on with the case for the plainfiff: —

(5)Most of those whom you may call, if you like, candidates for Devachan die and are reborn
in the Kama loka without remembrance. . . . You can hardly call remembrance a dream of
yours, some particular scene or scenes within whose narrow limits you would find enclosed
a few persons. . . etc., call it the personal remembrance of A. P. Sinnett if you can."
Noteson back of mine to Old Lady.

(6)"Certainly, the new Ego, once that it is reborn in the Devachan retains for a certain
time proportionate to its Earth life, a 'complete recollection of his spiritual life on
Earth.' Long Devachanletter.

(7)All those who have not slipped down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality —
go to the Devachan, ibid.

(8)It (Devachan) is an idealed paradise in each case of the Ego's own making and by him filled
with the scenery crowded with the incidents and thronged with the people he would expect
to find in such a sphere of compensative bliss. Ibid.

(9)Nor can we call it a full but only a partial remembrance. X. Love and
hatred are the only immortal feelings, the only survivors from the wreck of the Ye-damma
or phenomenal world. Imagine yourself in Devachan then, with those you may have loved
with such immortal love, with the familiar shadowy scenes connected with them for a background,
and a perfect blank for everything else relating to your interior social political and
literary life — Former letter, i.e. Notes.

(10)Since the conscious perception of one's personality on Earth is but an evanescent dream,
that sense will be equally that of a dream in the Devachan — only a hundred
fold intensified."LongDevachan letter.

(11)". . . . a connoisseur who passes aeons in the rapt delight of listening to divine
symphonies by imaginary angelic choirs and orchestras." Long letter. See
(9)X ante.See my notes 10 and 11 about Wagner etc.

You say:

(12A)"In no case then, with the exception of suicides and shells is there any possibility
for any other to be attracted to a seance room." Notes.

(12B)"On margin I said rarely but I have not pronounced the word never."
Appended to mine of 12th Aug.